1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of electronic media file content distribution. Additionally, the invention relates to embedding unique electronic signature information, referred to as watermarks, and inserting these watermarks into an electronic media file to facilitate the authentication of the person responsible for the file.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of the Internet and the World Wide Web as tools for content delivery and e-commerce has increased dramatically in recent years. As a consequence, the delivery of electronic media content materials such as music, videos, software, books, multi-media presentations, images, and other electronic media over a network to one or more consumers has likewise increased dramatically. Users may download such electronic media files legitimately from a content provider, for example a record label such as Sony Records or Capitol Records, or inappropriately from one of the content download services without the permission of the copyright owner. Using a network such as the Internet, users may, and quite frequently do, transfer digital media files they have downloaded, whether legitimately or otherwise, to others.
In this way, consumers of electronic media information may simply and freely distribute such media information over a public network such as the Internet without the permission of the copyright owner (or other property rights owners). Such consumers who inappropriately distribute copyright material over public networks cannot currently be positively identified, if they can even be tracked down at all. Therefore, these consumers can quite often successfully deny culpability.
A prevalent concern within the media publishing and/or distribution business is that the supply vs. demand equation that drives the economics of valuable goods and services no longer applies to digital media. Since a digital media file such as a music or movie file can be duplicated essentially an unlimited number of times and distributed at virtually no cost, the economics for providing such digital materials to the public is not viable. In order to return the supply versus demand equation back to the digital media domain, individual digital media files must be configured in such a way as to give them properties similar to physical objects. With such physical properties, these files can be handled and monitored in ways that are similar to physical objects, thus allowing the return of the necessary economic incentives and viability.
To date, there have been various approaches to solving the problems associated with the management, control and distribution of digital media files. Most of these approaches focus on protecting digital media files in such a way as to limit the functionality of such files when outside of the domain that has been pre-approved by the authorized distributor of such media. An example is found in the distribution of encrypted digital information along with an encryption key that will only decrypt the information under a limited number of circumstances.
Although encryption schemes have provided solutions to other problems involving digital media content, it is not the preeminent answer to the problem of identifying and monitoring content files. For example, encryption schemes provide an unsatisfactory solution for digital media for the following reasons:                1) Encryption schemes are often targets for many hackers, and it is typically only a matter of time before decryption algorithms will be discovered and published on a wide scale.        2) The market is overwhelmed with a number of encryption schemes. Therefore, no single standard is likely to be adopted and enforced.        3) Encryption adds a great deal of expense to the distribution of digital media. In some cases, this extra expense may make the difference between profitable and unprofitable distribution.        4) Encryption adds a layer of complexity for the consumer that will most likely result in lower consumer satisfaction.        5) Popular media sharing facilities, for example Napster, have educated tens of millions of consumers about the ease with which media files can be transferred. It may in fact be too late to successfully change the accepted model for electronic media distribution.        
Consumers might possibly have embraced encryption of digital media files had it been introduced on a large scale before the Napster file-sharing model. Consumers generally will learn to accept models that add a level of complexity if these models are in fact the only models available. However, the complexities that content distributors would like to introduce into the market with encryption will arrive after the superior model has been introduced. This will likely result in media content file protection schemes such as encryption and copy protection disappearing over time.